To Be Rich
by Vaoni
Summary: Dinner with the Bucket's had always been a family occasion. Mr. Wonka's presence only cemented that. Mr. Bucket's POV. Post CaTF.


_To Be Rich_

**Disclaimer: **I do not own anything in relation to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – including books or movies. No profit. Zilch. None. Unfortunately!

**Summary: **Dinner's with the Bucket's had always been a family occasion. Mr. Wonka presence only cemented that. Mr. Bucket's POV. Post CaTF.

**Author's Note: **I love the Bucket family. I really think they are a fine example of the importance of family and of appreciating whatever life gives you. I've noticed that quite a lot of fics hate on Mr. Bucket and in my eyes, he seems like quite a lovely man. After all, he did raise Charlie! I hope you enjoy my fic and please review afterwards and tell me whether you liked it!

~x~

"…_. His evening visits were something that they looked forward to all day long. Often, Charlie's mother and father would come in as well, and stand by the door, listening to the stories that the old people told; and thus, for perhaps half an hour every night, the room would become a happy place, and the whole family would forget that it was hungry and poor."_

~x~

"Dear, what's for dinner tonight?"

"Roast Chicken with some green beans and mashed potatoes," she said as she pulled a great stack of plates out of the cupboard, "… and I've baked a lovely pudding for dessert, you know how Mr. Wonka gets without his dessert."

He smirked behind his newspaper at the comment. It seemed childish and immature but it wasn't because of a temper tantrum that caused them to always bake desert. It was because, in a factory full of dessert options, it was always better to leave the man without a surprise or two. The first few times they had not had dessert, it had ended in a veritable platter of sweets, cakes and lollies. While his taste buds didn't seem to mind, his stomach was starting to bulge and he didn't like the lethargy he suddenly seemed to feel.

Charlie was lying on the couch, he nose absorbed in large, hard cover book. He had filled out, his body finally accepting the nutrients of their meals. While he was still thin, he had shot up in height, a constant issue to consider when finding clothes.

"Do you know when Mr. Wonka will be arriving?" He asked his son, who looked up from his book with a slightly dazed expression.

"Oh, well, he did say that he had a few rooms to visit but he should be around soon."

"Mr. Wonka, sure has been busy lately, hasn't he?" Said his wife as she began to set the table. He loved the new table they had; he had bought it with his increased pay.

"He's releasing a few products soon so he's a bit nervous about how they'll be received."

Despite the nervous, childish and completely foreign way that the man operated, Mr. Bucket never tried to underestimate him. He could be both entertaining and ferocious, a veritable storm of determination and will power. Not only was his factory a testament to that but even his persistence in keeping out the reporters and the length of his working days, which would have killed normal people. He could never be sure but from what he had heard from Charlie, there was little time for anything such as sleep in the man's life. More then a few times he had turned up to Breakfast in the same outfit he had left dinner with.

Mrs. Bucket smiled at Charlie's statement, "And would any of these products happen to involve you?"

Charlie blushed, his ears lined with the red signs of his humility and integrity, "Yes… but only a few. Mr. Wonka came up with most of the ideas. I mostly just help him combine the different ingredients or to work out the kinks."

"Well, it sounds to me like you are doing a lot more then you give yourself credit for," said Mrs Bucket, pride in every line of her body.

"Charlie has always been such a humble boy. I think all Buckets are like that," Grandma Josephine said as she knitted away. While she could walk, just as Grandpa Joe did, she often tired quickly and retreated to her comfortable and familiar bed.

"In my day, I was anything BUT humble," said Grandpa George as he watched Mrs Bucket set the table, "but perhaps these kinds of traits skip a generation."

Mr. Bucket held back his amusement while he spoke, "Well, we're all very proud of Charlie, aren't we?"

The occupants of the room all gave their approval, his wife kissing her son on his forehead. It had been years since they had moved into the factory yet every day they appreciated what they had. Mr. Bucket had never wanted his family to experience what they used to.

Sometimes, when he was meant to be asleep, he would think about the times when Charlie used to cry from the hunger, when his son would sleep in the middle of his grandparents bed because the cold was too frigid and terrifying to allow him rest. He often wondered how they survived, how they beared to walk into the charity shops every week and ask for a simple tin of soup. He would never forget the look on his wife's face when she began to plant their cabbages. He knew that she was preparing for the worst, for the day when even food couldn't be found in a charity bin.

A hesitant knock on the door made them all look up. Even at the slightest hint of the man, all of their attention would be focused on him.

Mrs. Bucket walked to the door, wiping her hands on her apron as she did so, "Mr. Wonka, come in, come in. You've eaten with us enough to know that knocking is really not necessary!"

The man smiled as he took off his Top Hat and placed it on a small hook. Even though he was family, at least in the Bucket's eyes, he still stood nervously in their presence. Mr. Bucket often thought that his childhood must have been a lot worse then he made it out to be. He once had a friend who grew up in a house were hitting was as regular as the postman. He had been shy, awkward and unpredictable. One moment he would be fine and the next, he'd be running out the door. Mr. Bucket could see a reflection of that behaviour in Mr. Wonka. It made him feel pity for the man, something that he hated to reflect on. To him, pity was an insult to everything Wonka had created, everything he had achieved in his life. And yet, sometimes, he would be overwhelmed with the feeling. Regardless, it made him appreciate the kind manner of his wife and the good-natured personality of his son.

"Mr. Wonka! Did you manage to stop the overflow in the Inventing Room?" Charlie asked as he put his book down and turned to face his mentor. Mr. Bucket could see the adoration Charlie held for the man shining through his eyes. It made him feel inferior, a commonality in Charlie's bizarre and extraordinary world.

Mr. Wonka walked over to Charlie, sitting on the wooden chair near the couch, "I used some of the taffy I've been storing to plug all of the seams. I'll tell you what, we should really be marketing it as a household product!"

It was completely unfathomable how the man seemed to solve situations that otherwise would have needed a mechanic, engineer or electrician. His intelligence was unnerving to Mr. Bucket, especially since he only had a basic knowledge of the machine's he fixed.

Charlie looked at Mr. Wonka with an adoring smile, "So we didn't lose any of it?"

"Only a few galleons but not enough to stop production. Charlie, I think we're onto something with this. I woke up in a dead sweat last night and I just know that I was dreaming of it. Of course there was something about spiders and an annoyed Wangdoodle but I think I was dreaming of it…." The man trailed off into nothing, his murmuring causing a smile to bloom even wider on Charlie's face.

Mrs Bucket interjected, "Dinner everybody!"

The house erupted as the older inhabitants swung their legs out of bed and wrestled their way to the table. Grandpa Joe was eyeing the pudding as he sat near to it, his glasses sliding down his nose at his determination. Mr Bucket led his mother to the table, her old, feeble form seemingly fragile in his hands.

With an echo of, "I like spaghetti," to which Mr. Bucket politely reminded Grandma Georgina of its absence, the entire family began to eat.

Like any boy, Charlie created a near mountain on his plate. There was one of everything and he was sure that the boy would go back for seconds. They all knew that if they didn't feed his growing appetite, he would resort to candy and chocolate. Grandpa Joe dug into a chicken leg, still eyeing the pudding while Mr. Bucket spooned some green beans onto his mother's plate. He noticed that Mr. Wonka barely had anything on his plate, a few pieces of chicken and some mash potatoes. He knew that it was a sore point for the man; he had once dashed from the table when Mrs Bucket had brought up the amount of food he ate. No one knew whether he usually ate anything but candy, even Charlie couldn't remember if he ate lunch.

But then, like most things, it was something they simply let be. He didn't seem to fall ill, nor did he lose weight. In fact, by all accounts, he seemed happy to nibble on his food and then let it be. Mr. Bucket didn't like to think about it but sometimes, he had the instinctual feeling that Wonka wasn't quite human. He didn't know how to rationalize that thought but he knew that Mr. Wonka hardly ate, had both blue and lavender eyes, had an infinite number of rooms to explore and that he never seemed to age. Even in the few years they had been in the factory, a time when even his face had a wrinkle or two as an addition, not one line appeared on the man's face. By Grandpa Joe's reckoning, he had looked exactly the same when he opened Cherry Street.

He shrugged off the disturbing thought as he tucked into his chicken. His wife, smiling at him brightly, asked him, "So dear, how was work today?"

He smiled, "Good. Quite normal. A few more of the machine's broke down and the boss thinks that maybe someone is doing it deliberately. I don't understand people like that but I guess it gives me more work."

Mr Wonka suddenly turned a paler shade of white, his face now ashen as he spoke, "People like that… treacherous, lying people. They should close the whole factory down and investigate it all."

There was a slightly awkward pause around the table. They all knew that the man was reliving his own experiences with spies and liars. His eyes had taken on a far away gaze, his face entirely blank except for the slightly confused expression formed by his eyebrows.

"Mr. Wonka, if they stopped operation in the factory, I would be out of the job."

The chocolatier didn't look at him but instead, poked at his food, a miserable expression on his face.

"Mr. Wonka, if it hadn't been for those spies, you never would have found the Oompa Loompa's and I never would have met you…" Charlie was looking at the man earnestly, his expression forlorn.

The man regained his former happy expression, looking up with a certain fondness at the boy, "That's right, I wouldn't have. I think…" his eyes widened, "that I have an idea. But I'll have to talk to you about it after dinner, very new and all, just formed."

"Of course," his son said, his expression enthusiastic. As usual, there seemed to be no pattern to when the man suddenly had an idea.

Gandpa Joe, completely ignoring that their conversation had taken on a different path, spoke patiently, "Mr. Wonka, I never did ask, what did the spies actually do, what did they reveal?"

A pained expression, surprisingly mature, stole across Mr. Wonka's face. Mr. Bucket was shocked by the transformation of the man, the change from child to adult. It was in moments like that, when he remembered that across from him, was the god of an empire. He often had to remind himself that Mr. Wonka wouldn't have succeeded if he didn't understand the world he had entered into.

"Those treacherous leaches," said Mr. Wonka with an expression of disgust, "…found their way into my private quarters."

The table looked horrified. They all knew how private and secretive the man was. While he didn't know about Charlie, he knew that every other occupant of the dinner had never seen his quarters. They all had imagined what it would look like but to have that trust and privacy breached was almost repellent in its thought.

Mr. Wonka continued, "They went through about three of my drawers before I caught them. There were two drawers away from my most secret, treasured and confidential recipes. I could have been ruined. Ruined before I had even begun," his face betrayed the misery of his thoughts. They all knew that the factory was Wonka's life, without it, he was almost unimaginable.

"At least… they didn't take anything important."

"Oh, but they did. They took away my trust and because of that, I condemned hundreds of people to unemployment," he picked up his fork and poked at his chicken, his face downcast. Mr. Bucket couldn't help but notice that his eyes, hard to forget with their piercing intelligence and creativity, had changed from their usual blue, to a strange lavender colour. It was eerie and yet another reminded of his suspicious thoughts.

"Oh dear," said Mr. Wonka with an upset expression, "I've ruined this entire meal."

"No you haven't Mr. Wonka. There's nothing wrong with telling us what has upset you," as always, Charlie was eager to calm his mentor.

Mr. Wonka sighed, "Such a different f-f….. family," he smiled triumphantly before his face fell again, "then what I used to have…. But never mind that." His eyes glazed over as he thought of his childhood. Mr. Bucket could see a slight tremble to his mouth, as if recalling a particularly horrible event.

Charlie smiled adoringly, "Well, we're you're family now, Mr. Wonka."

A comfortable silence settled and Mr. Bucket found himself okay with such a declaration. He felt something akin to respect and admiration for how the man had saved him from poverty. He didn't think that he was like a son, or a brother but perhaps, a crazy uncle. He smiled to himself at the thought.

"The sky is rather blue," said Grandma Georgina as she ate a green bean.

Mrs. Bucket smiled warmly as she asked, "Have you heard from your father lately?"

Mr. Wonka went pale again, his previously happy and excited eyes turning dull and nervous. Once, he had seen a cat cornered in an alleyway by a bunch of school boys. The animal had shaken as it had walked side to side and then slunk to the closest wall that it flattened itself against. He had an uncomfortable sensation of remembrance at the look on the man's face, the look of a desperate and defensive cat that was surrounded by a gang of schoolboys.

Instead of answering her question, he looked over to Mr. Bucket, shocking him with his lavender, shining eyes. Something passed between them and, though he felt silly for thinking it, he was sure that he saw something of respect and longing in Wonka's eyes. A longing that came from having a parent who didn't understand you and never even tried. A respect that came from seeing a little boy prosper because his parents had been willing to go through hell, just to make him happy. He understood at least, why he was uncomfortable around Charlie's family. There was a slight bitterness to the man when the subject of families was introduced. He knew that the man often wondered just why he had been denied something that even the poorest little boy in the town had been allowed.

Mr. Bucket, noticing Mr. Wonka's lack of reply, decided to speak, "It is just after Easter, I'm sure you're father is busy with all of the cavities and broken teeth."

The other man didn't reply, his expression distant, the indication of a flash back written all over his face.

"Who wants some pudding?" Said Mrs. Bucket merrily and all at once, attention slipped from Mr. Wonka and his odd mood swings to the delicious pudding tantalizing their taste buds and noses. His wife served Mr. Wonka first, a polite gesture meant to warm their guest. It was odd to think that _they _were really guests in Mr. Wonka's factory, although inside the factory and inside their house, he was now the guest.

Charlie dug into his pudding with gusto, his face curling into a smile at the taste. Mr. Bucket noticed a healthy shine to the boy, almost a glow about his skin and eyes that made him look insatiably normal. It had been a long time since he had seen such a look in any member of his families eyes. There life had been hard, full of unpredictable bouts of bad luck without any good luck to balance it. He had always believed that things happened for a reason, that he had meant to suffer through such terrible times to really appreciate what it is he had now.

It had seemed unfair to him that his bad luck was passed through another generation. But when he looked at his child, he knew that without the poverty and hardship, his Charlie wouldn't have grown into such a gentle, honest and humble child.

When the pudding was finished and Mr. Wonka had helped Mrs. Bucket clear the table (his sense of guilt made him unable to dine with them unless he had helped with the clearing), each member of the house began to feel sleepy; drowsy. A good meal tended to do that to them. Charlie was sitting at the table still, his head nestled in his arms as he stared up at his mentor and mother clearing the table. Mr. Bucket had fed the fire, poking it reassuringly as it crackled merrily. They loved warmth.

"Thank you, dear Buckets. I should be going now. Plenty time and no work to do! Wait... Strike that and reverse it!" Said the eccentric man as he picked up his top hat and cane and fitted to each according place. "Charlie, I'm going to start work at Fudge Mountain tomorrow, make sure you bring a coat, I'll have some snow shoes ready for you."

Charlie smiled gleefully, his face full of excitement.

While Mr. Wonka was walking out of the door, Mr. Bucket followed him out. It surprised the candy man at first to have the leader of the Bucket house follow him out. He could tell straight away that the man was worried if he had made some social error or that he had offended Mr. Bucket somehow.

When the door was closed, he turned to the man. Mr. Wonka's eyes were a hauntingly lavender colour, sparkling with curiosity and apprehension. They had never talked personally before and Mr. Bucket felt nervous under the stare, feeling their roles almost immediately switched.

"Mr. Wonka," he said hesitantly as the man nodded silently (it was odd to see him so still), "I just wanted to thank you."

There was a genuine look of surprise on the man's face as the word's escaped his lips, "For what?"

Mr. Bucket shuffled nervously, aware that he had never been so forward to the man before, "For everything. For this... More then anything, for Charlie. I've never seen him look so… happy before."

The man's solemn and confused gaze instantly transformed as a smile -much like a Cheshire Cat's- curled along his mouth. The twinkle in his eyes increased and a rosy tint filled his cheeks, making him look surprisingly gentle and charming. "You give me too much credit. Charlie earned all of this!"

"I-I know. But… I didn't…. nor did the rest of my family. We're just fortunate enough to have come along for the ride."

"Oh, but I think you did earn it. Charlie never would have won if he had been like the other children – spoiled, selfish and unkind they were, every last one of them. Do you know," he said suddenly, a glint of mischievousness in his eyes, "the very morning of the factory tour when I read whom the last golden ticket winner was, I just knew that Charlie would win. All the rest were so repulsive, I wouldn't stand to have them win my factory! But little Charlie, well, I'm afraid he won it the moment he uncovered that ticket. So you see, if it hadn't of been for you raising Charlie to be the boy he is, he never would have won the prize at all!"

Mr. Bucket was overwhelmed by the revelation. By the intensity of Mr. Wonka's care for the boy and understanding of his nature. He would have never guessed that Charlie was already picked and chosen to win before even stepping foot in the factory. He felt a swelling of pride for his boy and an indulgent pride in himself for having raised such a child.

They stood in a strange silence, neither uncomfortable or comfortable as they digested the conversation and its implications. It wasn't long before Mr. Wonka gave a cheery smile and said energetically, "Then if all thanks have been given, I shall see you on the morrow, my dear sir!"

Mr. Bucket nodded energetically, "You're welcome at any time."

"Then for that, I thank you," and there was a different look in his eyes. Instead of their intelligent shine, there was sadness. A sadness that came from a life of hardship and rejection and betrayal.

He watched in quiet reverence as Mr. Wonka walked away, the candy grass and trees seeming strangely designed for his quirkiness and uniqueness.

For the first time in his life, Mr. Bucket felt rich.

~x~

I hope you enjoyed my story, please review!


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